Kim Shuck, poet & artist, conducts Bird & Beckett’s virtual poetry series twice a month. On the second Monday of the month, two poets are featured with an open mic following; on the fourth Monday of the month, it’s all open mic. So polish up a gem or grab one you want to try out on other poets and Zoom in. We’ll post the Zoom invitation in this space three or four days ahead of the reading.

As San Francisco Poet Laureate from June 2017 to January 2021, Kim Shuck made it her mission to be the laureate of the City’s open mics, and so she was, traveling without pause week after week from venue to venue and co-hosting ours with long-time major domo Jerry Ferraz. Once the pandemic hit, she took our reading online, onto Zoom, and carried on with barely any real help from us but major technical support from Brett Benson, a thoughtful poet who had become well entrenched in our live series over the preceding few years. The online reading, shifting to 2nd and 4th Mondays, gathered momentum quickly and is now a solid community of poets open to all sincere comers, and they are legion!

So on it goes! We’ve resumed our live in-store series, now once a month on the 1st Thursday of the month, with Michael Koch stepping up to share the M.C. duties with Jerry Ferraz, but Kim’s online series continues apace, now featuring a couple of poets with an open mic to follow on the 2nd Monday of the month, and an all-open session on the 4th Monday. So click on in and add to your power to the power of the Poets!Zoom…

Here’s to the poets!

We need what they’ve got!

/s/Eric, B&B prop.
Since 1999